Obama Socialism Poster Has Flickr Roots

The Obama/Joker “Socialism” poster became newsworthy recently for a few reasons, one of them being that it’s based on a stolen Flickr image – which itself was essentially stealing two copyrighted properties.

The LA Times tracked down the “owner” of the image, 20-year-old University of Illinois student Firas Alkhateeb, who says he posted the modified Time cover in January after creating it in Photoshop. It wasn’t until someone (still not publicly known who) took the image, removed the Time title, added “socialism” and plastered the posters around LA that people really started to take notice.

Forget that the article actually treats this college student’s political views as if they’re relevant and the myriad of things in play, from the trumped up socialism frenzy to political statements to copyright issues. The puzzling thing for me is that the Joker is the quintessentially self-interested cartoon villain, so the link between him and Obama’s purported socialism just doesn’t really add up. But whoever did it, you just know, thinks he/she is really, really clever right about now.